


Anna Winters and the Silent Sister

by Rhaeluna



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Noir, Angst, BAMF Anna, Depression, Detective Noir, F/F, Gangsters, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Private Investigators, References to Drugs, Sibling Incest, Sister-Sister Relationship, Sister/Sister Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-20 14:36:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16557608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhaeluna/pseuds/Rhaeluna
Summary: Elsa was supposed to be dead, and Anna had been drinking away her memory for years. Turns out it might not have stuck. Even a sliver of hope is enough to set Anna Winters, PI, on the hunt for her lost sibling.





	Anna Winters and the Silent Sister

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the November fic contest on the elsanna-shenanigans.tumblr.com Discord server. The prompt was "Where are you?"  
> Also an exercise in trying to write silly noir prose.

Arendelle wasn’t her first choice of city, not by a long shot. It was the sort of place that invited you over for dinner, then kicked you in the teeth and stole your faded family photos just to piss on them. Poverty, crime. Big wigs sitting atop it all in thrones of ivory watching other folks writhe to make ends meet. A black hole sucking the light down from heaven. Taking and taking. 

Her name was Anna Winters, private investigator, and she’d had it with her hometown. Thundering rain, smoggy skies. Years of splashing through the streets and somehow it always stank the same. She’d started as a crook, then became a cop, then a crooked cop, and eventually found herself crawling out of a dumpster drunk at 3am with dreams of making a difference. She’d just spent three grand of hush money on a good time. Anna was pathetic, a wash out, and she’d already long the most important person in the world. She’d quit the force, ran from her family, spent a week on the streets. It was the memories that haunted her, the empty coals where fire used to be. 

The city was broken. She was broken. Winters did the only thing she knew how to do and buried herself in her caseload like a muskrat running from the roar of a train. She still staked out the long nights and still got in too many fights she couldn’t win—Gaston’s eye would never recover and she was damn proud of that fact, even if she’d hit the pavement—but the girl kept chugging along. For Arendelle? There were a few nights, asleep in her chair at the office, that she’d been able to convince herself it was true. 

The cases, the chase; that’s what got Anna up in the morning. Adrenaline. It was when Anna didn’t get her fix that things got rough. Then the memories came. 

It was a Wednesday, and the girl was staggering to her office through the late morning haze. Her eyes burned. The last case she’d had was old Yzma, and that was last week. Classic case of fraud and identity theft, nothing new. High for an hour, slump for a year. 

Figures passed her by: a few dressed to the nines, most clinging to rags. She couldn’t see their faces by the glow of the sun through the mist, but that suited Anna just fine. Shadows. She planned on more of the same when she reached the office: nap off last night’s hangover and stew until nobody showed up and she locked up against and went home. The grind. Her hands twitched in her coat pockets. 

She turned the corner on Main Street where the pavement switched to cobble. Anna jolted in surprise when she noticed a figure standing on her office step. A new client? She stuck her hands in the pockets of her slacks and strode up to the small concrete stairs leading inside. The figure came into focus as she approached, and dread curdled in Anna’s gut. Why couldn’t’ she just get to work on time? Idiot. Were she already inside it would be simple enough to see people coming through the window, and then she’d just draw the blinds and locked the door on any dark memories waltzing back through the messily stitched wound that was her life. 

“Hello, mother,” Anna said to the figure. Iduna Winters startled, and held onto the rusted steel railing for balance. She swiveled like an old clock, and Anna was just close enough to see a fierce glint in her eyes. She’d barely changed. Wrinkles here, sag there. But her eyes--Anna was five again.

“Oh, Anna!” Iduna tittered down the stairs and opened her arms. “Give me a hug, sweetie!”

“No.”

“Oh.” She frowned, and her expression settled into a glare. “That’s no way to greet your mother.”

“Is this business, or are you here to torment me?” Anna scoffed, “because if you want the latter, waking up today beat you to it.” She jerked her head, and Iduna stepped aside so she could ascend the stairs to the office door. 

A click of a key, a slide of metal. Anna stepped in and shucked off her jacket, adjusting her suspenders underneath as she hung up the coat on the rack. Anna grimaced, and slunk around her crummy wooden desk to her chair. She slumped down, and kicked her feet up. She wasn’t shocked that her failure of a parent hadn’t left. Clingy. Desperate. 

“Well? Are you coming in?” 

Iduna glanced around, her hands clasped behind her. “May I?”

Anna rolled her eyes. “Depends, I guess. Why are you here? I’m busy.”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

Anna snorted, but didn’t bother replying. Iduna shut the door at a glacial pace. She shuffled to the chair before Anna’s desk, and set her bag down in her lap as she sat. Leather, bright and black. Once they were out of the mist the purple bruise on her left cheek hastily faded with concealer was plain as day.

“How’s dad?” 

“Fine.” Iduna turned her head, hiding the bruise from Anna. The girl shrugged, and dug through her desk for a pack of smokes. Repeated patterns. Iduna coughed before speaking again. “I know we didn’t really part on the best of terms, Anna, b-but I—“

“Get on with it or I’m throwing you out.” Where were her cigarettes? 

“I need your help.”

“You’ve never needed my help.” Just leave. 

“I have a lead on Elsa.” 

Anna stopped rooting through her desk. She met her mother’s eyes. “Bullshit.” Memories swam. A snowman in winter, a house without power, nights spent in the same bed. A mother who couldn’t accept the death of her daughter and grasped at every straw that fell in her path. 

Iduna slammed her fist on the table, and Anna flinched back. Memories of bruised ribs, cheeks. “She was in the paper! Look!” Last week’s newspaper flew from her bag and slapped against the heavy wooden desk.

Anna grit her teeth, and began digging again. Goddamnit. Kisses under the moon, every first shared. “She’s dead, mom! If you came here just to peddle your sycophantic fantasies get the hell out of my office!” Why’d she let her in? Her hand grasped a box, and she ripped it out from behind a case binder. Anna hadn’t done a very good job of hiding them from herself. 

“Anna, just look! Please!” They’d buried her. Lowered Elsa into the ground in a coffin of cheap wood. Anna hadn’t been allowed to see inside. Rainy days alone in her apartment, locked away; aging parents who refused to answer any of Anna’s questions. The funeral was the first time she’d seen them in years. A fight. They would never get it. Anna couldn’t tell them. 

Anna snatched up the paper and set her cigarettes aside. “I’ll look, but then you leave.” 

“There, the crowd shot on page five!” Her mother jabbed at the back of the paper with needle-like nails. 

Anna found the picture. A crowd wandering the square with only the faces in front visible through the smog. Anna scanned; nothing. Fury bubbled in her lungs, until--wait. She leaned closer. Her heart stopped. There was Elsa, dressed in a heavy coat and stood beside a tall, pointed woman in billowing dark furs. She had the same white hair, the same look in her eyes. She was staring off into the crowd. Anna hadn’t realized her hands were shaking. She swallowed air.

“Oh my god.” A torrent of smiles and crying faces, of adult lives entangled. 

“See! See, it’s her!” Iduna stood, knocking her chair to the floor behind her.

“It looks like her, sure. Might not be.” She made her words contemplative, but her mind was already steeled. Anna began tearing the photograph out of the paper.

“So you’ll take the case?” 

Anna finished, and dropped the remainder of the newspaper in the trash. She held up her free hand, and Iduna went silent. She wanted to say no. She wanted to punch her insect of a mother in her crooked teeth and throw her onto the street. Another flash of memory; Iduna snarling as she threw Elsa and Anna onto the street overnight to fend for themselves. Lives connected. Breaking away from their parents when they came of age, refusing to see them. Together. Anna stepping off the tram just before a rogue car slammed into the metal front of the trolley with Elsa still inside. Waking up in the hospital. “Nothing left of her,” a doctor was saying. 

Anna glanced at her office’s liquor cabinet, and spent a moment weighing her options. Let the ghosts lie, maybe. What were the odds that Elsa was actually still alive? She shook her head. 

“I’ll look into it,” Anna stomped her foot to stop her mother from speaking, “but I’m not doing it for you. Don’t ever come back here.” She pocketed the black and white photograph and picked her coat off the hanger. Blood thrummed in her ears. Iduna spoke, something about keeping her in the loop. Anna ignored her as she shrugged into her jacket sleeves and strode out into the miasma of fog.

 

-o-

 

The afternoon streets looked like night. Anna trudged through an alleyway and took care to watch behind her shoulder. If it came down to it she had her pistol. That and her handsome pugilist self. 

Anna Winters was used to following her gut, and her gut was telling her to look into the tall broad who’d been photographed next to her sister. She hadn’t recognized her, of course, too many faces in the crowd to know ‘em all, but thankfully, she knew someone who would. An old friend who knew everyone. 

Anna stopped in the middle of the alleyway, right behind a gambling parlor. From the smell of their dumpster, they’d just had paninis. Anna knocked on the back door, steel all the way through, and waited. A minute passed. She coughed, and the air from her lungs pushed the smog like wind. The door opened, and a humongous brick of a man strode into the musky light. He was taller than a house, or felt as much, and had hands that could crack stone. The pinstripe suit he wore was bursting at the seams from his girth. 

The big man smiled. “Anna!” 

“Hey, Ralph.” She did her best to smile and not look like a crocodile. 

“Business or pleasure tonight?” 

She chuckled. “Business, but I feel like you can never really tell with V.”

“Pretty much. Come on in!” 

Anna stepped through the door, and Ralph slammed it behind her. They journeyed through a long, narrow corridor that wouldn’t have felt out of place in a steel mill. One flight of stairs, three more doors, and a tip of the hat later and Anna was walking through the house, games of all kinds buzzing about her to the tune of whimsical colors and gallivanting waiters. A jazz band backed it all on the stage. 

Ralph led her upstairs, past the unwashed public, and into the back. Ralph knocked on the finest wooden door Anna had ever seen, and turned the knob to let her in after a muffled voice called out from inside. Vanellope con Schweetz sat at her desk, papers and drawing strewn about like she was planning a carnival. A heavy cigar stuck from her teeth and nearly dropped as she glanced up at Anna.

“Firestarter!” 

Anna waved. “Hey, V.” 

The short woman sprung her desk and slid up to Anna’s side, taking her arm in her own. Ralph left the room to stand guard outside. The door shut behind him. “Come in, sit down! It’s been so long, hey! How’ve you been doing?” 

Anna wrapped an arm around her friend’s shoulders. “About the same.” 

A grimace. “That bad, huh?” Vanellope led Anna to a plush leather couch in the corner and began rummaging through her liquor cabinet. “Well, I can’t fix that for you, but I’m very good at helping to take the edge off!” She grinned at Anna, two tumblers and a bottle of whiskey in hand, but it wasn’t like it used to be

It’d be so easy to just get plastered with her, make out a bit. Old times. Anna smiled. “Not today, V. I need your help.”

Vanellope scoffed. “Fine. Drinks afterwards, then.” She sauntered to the couch and plopped down next to Anna, their shoulders and thighs touching. “What can I do you for? Been a hot minute since you came to lil’ old me for help.” 

“Just doing for cases, mostly.”

“Cases of murder or cases of alcohol?” 

Anna raised an eyebrow, and she grunted. “You just offered me drinks. You sure you’re not the one who needs an intervention?”

“Ohohoho, scathing.” Vanellope took a puff of her cigar, and slapped Anna’s shoulder. It was almost comically too large for her face. “What is it, then?” 

Anna rummaged in her pocket. The photograph of Elsa felt like hot lead in her fingers. “I’m looking for someone.” She showed it to Vanellope. Her friend was years off the force working the opposite side of the law, but she’d never lost her edge.

“That’s a lot of somebodies.” Vanellope reached out for the photo, and Anna gave it to her. 

“The girl with the white braid, bottom left.”

Vanellope’s eyebrow twitched. The light of recognition. “Ooh, pretty one. What, an ex?”

Anna bristled. She remembered Elsa’s lips, the smooth skin of her thighs. The late nights at the pier, a bottle between them and the stars brimming with wishes. “Does it matter?” Her voice cut like glass. She was getting riled up. her toe tapped the floor. 

“I mean yeah, kinda.”

Swimming in the lake, picking Elsa up in her police cruiser after she’d had too many drinks. She’d been working as a typist then. “That’s Elsa, my sister.” Her breathing came short. God, she was a hotwired mess. 

Vanellope blinked. Her nose scrunched. “Like, the dead one?”

Needles in her chest. Could be a little gentler, but. “Yeah.”

“Anna I hate to break it to you, but I’m a businesswoman, not an exorcist.” Anna stood, knocking Vanellope’s arm off her shoulder. She walked to the center of the room and stared at the floor, her fists balled at her sides. “Okay, okay. Easy.” The melody of Elsa’s laugh, the awkward gangle of her limbs. They’d been so young, so young and stupid.

“That’s the only lead I’ve got,” Anna said, “will you help me find her?” It was barely a chance. What was she even doing? The hope she’d had felt like ash in her mouth as she tried to verbalize her request. She glared at Vanellope, her heart thudding against her ribs. “Please.” No one could understand. 

Vanellope took another drag of her cigar. “Don’t look at me like that, Anna, of course I’ll help you.” She huffed. “But, funnystuff aside, you gotta be careful with this one.”

There, getting somewhere. “Any reason in particular?” 

Vanellope turned the photograph so Anna could see it, and pointed to the angular woman standing next to Elsa. “Well, yeah. That’s Maleficent Blackthrone.” 

Anna snatched the photo back and squinted at it. “Wait, really?” She’d never actually seen her before. 

“Name fits the face, don’t it?” 

“For sure.” Anna bit her lip. Blackthorne was a schemer, a murderer, a drug queen, and a bitch. The capitalist package. Anna’d had the displeasure of getting her fists intimate with the woman’s cronies a few times; a lot of dark deeds led back up the ladder to her. Unfortunately, she was also very, very good at covering her tracks. Of course it’d be dangerous, but it didn’t matter. Maybe she’d get lucky and Blackthorne would kill her before she even found Elsa. 

Vanellope cocked her head. The tease in her demeanor was tempered. “You’re going after the big dog, huh?” 

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Vanellope leaned over, and cupped her mouth as if to whisper, “I’ve got a surprise for you, then.”

Anna narrowed her eyes. Never a good sign. “What?” 

“Blackthorne’s here. She’s in the back playing blackjack.” She slapped her knee, and her face cracked in a grin. “Anna, you’re gonna make me dog after one of my regulars!” 

Anna narrowed her eyes. “You sure you want to do that? You’d make more money killing me dead and keeping her on your clientele list.” 

Vanellope stood from the sofa and slapped Anna on the shoulder. “You’re always so grim, come on.” 

“My sister came back from the dead, V.”

“Yeah, so celebrate! Blackthorne brought a few hooded goons in with her as she usually does, but they ain’t nothing Ralph can’t handle.” 

“Sure.” It felt too easy, but Anna didn’t want to explore that. “You make a habit of doing business with known crime bosses?” 

Vanellope scowled. “Ahh, don’t look at me like that. We ain’t cops anymore, Anna. I’ll help you, but don’t get on my case about this one, okay?” 

A curt nod. “Yeah.” 

They left the room, the whiskey untouched on Vanellope’s desk. Von Schweetz gestured to Ralph as they left, and he nodded to his boss and followed them down the hall, heavy feet thudding on the fine wood. They descended to the parlor floor, and weaved through the crowd of laughing gangsters and smack-talking broads to the suite.

Vanellope knocked. Anna shuffled on her feet. She checked her pistol, her emergency knife. A hooded figure cracked the door, saw Vanellope, and opened it the rest of the way. Anna took a deep breath, and followed her old partner inside. 

Blackthorne puffed a cigarette as she lounged in a leather loveseat, her arm draped over the back. The walls were covered in portraits of people Anna didn’t recognize. The room smelled thick of smoke and oil. Figures stood at attention behind their boss.

Anna followed Vanellope to the center of the room, and whirled when the door slammed behind her. Ralph stood in front of it, blocking the exit. His massive hands were crossed in front of him. He frowned. “Sorry, Anna,” he said.

“Hey Mal, I got a snoop prowling around,” Vanellope said to the shadowy woman in the chair. Anna froze. Her friend turned her back to her, and made a gesture of piety to Blackthorne. The crime queen glared at Anna, her gaze like a viper. 

“Oh?”

“Vanellope!” Anna roared, “you sold me out?” 

Vanellope glanced at Anna as she strode to the side of the room, removing herself from the crackling air between Anna and Blackthorne. “I’m sorry, Anna. We did worse back in the day. It’s just business.” 

Anna didn’t dare speak. Why was she even surprised? It made sense. Another day in Arendelle, another bridge collapsed into the sea. Maleficent laughed. At least Anna would get her quick end. 

“She’s looking for your ice queen,” Vanellope said, “turns out she had a sister.”

“Is that so? Elsa!” Blackthorne gestured to one of the hooded figures, “keeping secrets? Do you have something to say for yourself?”

Anna followed the point of the mob queen’s finger like it was directing her towards salvation. At the end of it, a figure against the wall lowered their hood. A white braid spilled from underneath the fabric. 

Anna felt weak in the knees. Her sister stepped forward at attention, her eyes glassy like the calm sea. Her lips had been sewn together. Tissue long since scarred surrounded the wounds. She carried a tattoo of Blackthorne’s insignia on her neck. 

“What, no comment?” Maleficent called out, “that’s just as well.” She scowled at Anna. “What did you hope to find here, little girl? Did your parents never tell you about me?” 

Anna’s hand flew to her pistol. Elsa’s leg disappeared and the gun was knocked from Anna’s grasp. She caught it, cocked the weapon, and held it to Anna’s forehead. It fit her palm like it had been made for her. Anna trembled. Elsa buying her ice cream, holding her hand on the street in cities where no one knew their names. 

“Elsa’s death was no accident,” Blackthorne said, “your family lived in my territory, and one day when your parents couldn’t pay up I told them to do a job for me. Crash a train, eliminate one of my rivals. I said I’d take Elsa away if they didn’t, but I didn’t expect them to actually succeed. They kept their lives, but, well, I kept your sister anyways. As a lesson, you know? She’s since become quite loyal. A trained killer who can disappear in broad daylight.” She sounded proud. 

Anna explored the eyes of her dead sibling, the love of her short, miserable life, but saw nothing that indicated affection. Of course their parents had been the ones to make such a mess of things. Of course they’d fallen prey to their base fears. Anna didn’t know how much of Blackthorne’s story was embellished, but she saw the kernel of truth in the center of it laughing to her face. Certainty solidified within her. At least she’d seen Elsa. She was a little happy, even, and felt a small smile form on her lips. Elsa was alive. It’d been true. 

She looked for Vanellope, and saw her standing at the far end of the room with her back turned, her hand on her cigar. Nothing was ever enough in Arendelle. No amount of love, no amount of history. In a town where people could be bought and sold, what was one or two lives against a bank vault full enough money to drown in? 

“Hey, Elsie,” she breathed, “it’s good to see you again.” Small gifts. 

“What?” Blackthorne asked.

“Nothing. You gonna kill me, or what?” 

Blackthorne cackled. Vanellope took another draw of her cigar. “Elsa, put your sister down and sink her body in the river.” 

Elsa cocked Anna’s pistol. The girl let out her last sigh, and wished for a cigarette to dull her end. “Do it, then.” Her gaze bored into Elsa’s crystal eyes. “I’ve lost the last reason I had for living, anyways.” If Elsa was as strong as Blackthrone said, she’d live. She’d live, and someday she might even be free. And that was enough. 

Silence. The bullet didn’t come. A breath came and went. Elsa whirled on her heel and plugged three shots into Blackthorne: one through the middle of her forehead, one through her open mouth, and one through the base of her neck. The hooded figures startled. Another turn, another shot. Ralph fell to the floor with a thud. Elsa grabbed Anna’s collar and threw her towards the door. She followed, skidding across the ground to palm Ralph’s revolver. The goons were moving. A thunder of rolling hits. Seven, eight of them fell as Elsa emptied Anna’s pistol and switched to the revolver without missing a beat. The cigar fell from Vanellope’s mouth a second before a hole appeared next to her eye. 

Anna didn’t think. Instinct kicked in. She grabbed a bottle from behind her and lobbed it at another one of the gangsters. They’d found their guns, and were about to return fire. The ones that were left, anyways. Another three shots. Anna kicked down the door. It swung out and hit someone on the back. The parlor had gone quiet as the grave as patrons hid under tables and behind columns of stone. 

Anna felt a hand grip her wrist. Elsa tugged her out of the room. The sprinted to the front door as shots rang out over their heads. Anna wanted to look behind them. No time. Another two shots and the glass panes of the door disappeared. They leapt through the new opening and vanished into the haze. 

 

-o-

 

Night on the river was the only thing about Arendelle that Anna found beautiful. If you sat on one side and looked across, the hundreds of lights looked like a glimmering snow shower amidst the smog. She sat in an abandoned fishing house on the pier, the waters rolling below. They’d had to scramble to get in, but it’d be a place to rest for the night. The air tasted like charcoal and salt; Anna coughed. She didn’t know what came in the morning.

Elsa kneeled before her, her eyes locked on the floor between them. She’d grown up so well. Tall, strong. Looked well fed. Same impossibly blond hair. She’d been wearing a black bodysuit under the cloak, but her many holsters and sheaths suspiciously lacked weapons. Blackthorne hadn’t armed her? 

“So what, you didn’t bother doing that before?”

Elsa looked into Anna’s eyes. The ice was gone. She was weary, and it looked like she’d been weary for a long, long time. Her mouth twitched, tugging the stitches in her lips. 

Anna’s insides felt raw like chopped fish. “What are you now, some super spy or something? An assassin, Blackthorne sad? God.” She scoffed. “Why didn’t you just come back!” Her teeth ground together. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Her shoulders trembled. 

Elsa frowned, and rubbed her hands in front of her chest. She shifted her weight. Her shadow was opaque on the floor.

“Goddamnit.” Anna slammed her fist against the floorboards. “Goddamnit!” Elsa flinched back. Anna watched her move; she pulled in on herself, demure. The invisible blade of death she’d been was gone, stripped away like a mask. Pitiable. Anna sighed, and reached into her pocket to pull out her pocketknife. She flicked it open, and Elsa’s glared at the steel. “Don’t worry,” she said, her voice softer, “let’s just get your mouth open again, okay?”

Elsa nodded twice. Anna reached forward and cupped her sister’s face to hold her steady. Her skin was chilly. It was the first time they’d touched in years, and it still sent electricity up through her ribs. Her cuts were clumsy. She made sure not to slice Elsa’s lips open, but she could have been cleaner getting through the thread. It turned out to be some kind of soft steel.

Half an hour later and Elsa’s muzzle was gone. Anna cut it up and pulled the threads through her scars, her rough hands failing to be delicate. When she was done, Elsa opened her mouth with a loud crack. Unused bones. 

“Is that better?” 

Elsa coughed. She inhaled through her mouth like it was the first time she’d ever done it. Anna’s chest couldn’t stop thudding. 

Elsa croaked, clearly trying to speak. She worried her hands, groaned, and tried again. “A-Anna,” she said. It was her voice. “Anna, ‘m so sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry.” Her eyes shimmered with tears as the power of speech came back to her. 

Anna cracked and spilled out onto the floor. She lurched forward and pulled her sister into a hug. Elsa’s muscled arms wrapped around her back and knocked the wind from Anna as she squeezed.

Anna cried. She was ashamed of it, but then again she was ashamed of a lot of things. She sobbed against her sister with the force of a storm. Elsa didn’t fare any better. “Elsa, god. God damnit, Elsa. I missed you so much. I thought you were dead!” Hours drinking alone, a memory of a flower on a grave in the rain. 

“I’m sorry, I know, I know.” 

“What happ—“ 

Elsa silenced her with a kiss. Her lips were scarred and rough, her fervor that of a teenager. Anna opened her mouth for her sister and sighed, her cheeks wet with ache. She pushed Elsa onto her back and cupped her face in her hands as she ate her up. Elsa’s hands explored the entirety of her back, her legs, her ass. 

The memories burned. Teenage years spent chasing kisses beyond the eyes of their parents. A childhood joined at the hip, unable to separate. Sneaking into rooms late at night, catching the cinema and pretending to be adults. Laughter, tears. Nights of muffled love. A secret that could never be shared. 

When Anna stopped, she didn’t get off her sister. Elsa could take it, the muscly wench. “I missed you s’ much,” Elsa said, “I love you, Anna.”

“What happened?” 

Elsa’s eyes grew dark. “Mom and dad. Maleficent stole me away and locked me in a cage,” her lips strained, “sewed up my mouth and fed me sludge through a straw in my nose. It went on for years. She told me you’d died. She told me you’d all died.” 

Anna growled, and took Elsa’s lips deep. Elsa shuddered under her touch. “Mom and dad told me you’d died. There was a funeral.” 

Elsa shut her eyes, and shook her head. “No. I wouldn’t. If only out of spite.” The hate in her voice was palpable. She looked so strong and yet so frail simultaneously. 

For the first time in weeks, Anna cracked a genuine smile. “That’s my girl,” she said.

“Anna, I don’t ever want to leave your side again.” Rough hands gripped Anna’s legs like steel. Heat bloomed between her thighs. 

She laughed. “I was just thinking the same thing.” They could have it all back, they’d find a way. Nothing would be the same, but that was okay. It had to be okay. 

Elsa looked up at her with wonder. “Y-you’d really still have me?” 

Like it was a question. Anna nodded. 

Elsa’s tears came again. She sniffled, and smiled. “Okay.” She was perfect. Even battered, she was the strongest person Anna had ever known. Her mentor, her lover, her sister. Her eyes glinted like stars on the moonlit wharf. “What should we do?”

Anna nuzzled into Elsa’s neck. “Let’s leave.” She had her treasure back. Anna felt the thick straps holding her to Arendelle come loose. 

“Leave? You have the money?”

“We’d only need enough for one-way tickets out.” She found Elsa’s hand and squeezed. “And I’ve got about that much stashed under my mattress from cases.” Burn it all away. 

Elsa laughed. It sounded strained, like something new trying to grow. “It’ll be hard.”

“We can do it. We can do anything.” Climbing mountains, running through the woods as kids. 

“Anna, I’m a murderer now.”

“I don’t care.”

Smiles exchanged, and the lightest of kisses passed between them. “God, I’ve missed you.” The moon passed behind a cloud, and the sisters disappeared into the dark.


End file.
